What Is the Afghan War Now For?

Apparently Americans will keep dying so Trump can brag how big a mistake the Taliban made

In comments to reporters, President Trump announced on Monday that the Afghan peace talks and entire process is “dead.” He claimed the Taliban had been telling everyone that they’d made a “big mistake” in crossing him.

Trump announced that he was scrapping the process on Saturday, citing the death of a US soldier in a car bombing last week. Though other officials claimed there were a lot of factors in play, Trump continued to insist it was just that soldier.

With peace no longer on the table, US officials are now back to claiming the war is going better than anyone realized, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming the US had killed over 1,000 Taliban in just the last 10 days.

Trump claimed the US is hitting the Taliban harder than at any time in the last 10 years. It’s not clear what the end-game of all of this is, as previously the idea was to get the situation to a position where the US could negotiate a deal to end the way.

Now, the deal is wholly negotiated, and all but signed, but also dead. This means it’s not clear at all what the US is going for, beyond continuing the war so President Trump can brag about how big of a mistake the Taliban made.